


Painted All in Black

by pockets_full_of_posies



Category: Barry (TV 2018)
Genre: Anger, Angst, Dark, Depression, Dreams, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Fear, Fear of Death, Flashbacks, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:35:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26712304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pockets_full_of_posies/pseuds/pockets_full_of_posies
Relationships: Barry Berkman/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Painted All in Black

_This was a bad idea. One of your worst._

The headlights of her car cut back and forth; the wheels beneath her could barely find traction. Ice and snow were what the road was now. Asphalt and concrete and gravel and dirt were distant memories. 

The world around her was ink and the only thing she could see was the road ten feet in front of her, the snow falling and falling. It seemed perpendicular to her now, hitting the windshield head on, faster and faster. The contrast between the headlights and the pitch black of the night was disconcerting. Almost blinding. 

The windshield wipers shot back and forth, trying to keep the oncoming storm at bay but they were almost useless at this point. She could barely see anything through the onslaught of white and white and white.

_What are you doing? Where are you even going?_

She shook her head at this thought, trying her best to remember. Shake out the cobwebs. She couldn’t remember exactly where she was going or why. But she knew she was on the right road and she needed to get where she was going and this was the way she had to go to get there. She had to get there.

A voice startled her. 

_Hello there._

Her hands gripped the wheel as she felt the road give out from underneath the car. She was spinning and in free fall and the road was gone and where did the road go and why was she falling and-

She started awake, her eyes flying open. Her breathing was shallow and quick and everything around her was dark. _Where am I?_ Her eyes wild, her pupils trying to adjust to the darkness. 

A clock flashed 3:00 on the nightstand. Her mother had always called that time the witching hour. She hated waking up at that time. It always gave her chills. But at least it meant that where she just was, wasn’t reality.

Her breathing slowed.

_Ok, it’s ok. You had a bad dream. You forgot you slept over tonight. It’s ok. It’s alright._

But then the voice from her dream was there. A dread filled her and she felt her stomach drop.

“Hello there, sweetheart.”

There was a man there. A man was sitting beside her on the bed. He was looking down at her. His eyes were serpentine. The moonlight and shadows on his face painted him as a demon. He smiled at her, his mouth black and possessed. 

He was holding her hand.

Her eyes went wide and white and a cold sweat covered her. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t remember how. 

Her eyes darted over her shoulder at Barry’s form beside her, his back to them. His chest rising and falling slowly and rhythmically.

A breath caught in her throat as she tried to say his name. Nothing came out. She was paralyzed. 

“Oh, don’t do that. Don’t wake him. Look how peaceful he looks. Can’t remember the last time I ever saw him sleep so well. You don’t want to ruin that for him now, do you?” The man gripped her hand, running his fingers over her knuckles. His voice was quiet and threatening, the empty, black smile never leaving his face. His eyes twinkled in the moonlight. _This man is death._

She shook her head no, ever so slightly. Sickness was in her throat. Tears welled up in her eyes.

“Oh stop that now. I just wanted to say hello. Wanted to meet you. He wouldn’t let me. You know how he gets.” He took his hand off of her and stood up. He looked like her uncle. The uncle that everyone whispered about at Thanksgiving. Short and stout and carrying some secret thing within him. He was even wearing the same kind of dusty old jacket that her uncle once wore. 

The man stretched and looked around the room. Then he knelt down on one knee beside her. Like a man proposing. Her breathing was shallow and she couldn’t move. If she could have she would have run away and never stopped.

His dark eyes glinted in the light sifting in through the window. He took her hand again without looking. His eyes seemed to look within and throughout and through her. She must have started breathing again at some point because she felt her breath hitch from within her. 

“Ok sweetheart, I’m not going to hurt you. But I wanted to ask you something. You’ve been with Barry for a little while now, right? What’s it been, nine, ten months?”

She nodded.

“You ever asked him about what he does? How he pays the bills around here?”

Her breath caught in her throat as she whispered “auto parts."

“Oh ok, good, good.” He considered this as he still looked through her, seeming to be searching for something. A lie?

_I am still in the bad dream. I am still there, this is still part of it. This is not really happening._

She looked back at Barry. He hadn’t moved.

The man let go of her hand and placed his grip on her wrist, pulling her to him. 

“Ok darling, and I’m just asking because I’m curious. Were you with him at around 3pm a few days ago? Around 3pm on Tuesday?” His eyes were stone.

She tried to think, frantically searching for what she had done on Tuesday. If she accidentally lied to this man she knew he would know.

_Say the wrong thing, and you are done. He will kill you._

“I was at home. I was reading. I remember because I looked at the clock and it said 3:00 and I didn’t like that.” She said it all in one low and still breath. _Please let that be enough._

His eyes searched her face. Whatever he found there seemed to be enough for him. 

Beside her Barry stirred. 

The man took his hand off of her and stood with a speed that surprised her. She looked over at Barry as he shifted underneath the blankets. When she turned her eyes back to where the man had been standing, there was only an empty space.

She felt her lungs finally expand.

_This was a dream. It was just a bad dream. You’re ok. Just breathe. Take a breath._

She took a breath.

\-----

Barry sat on the floor at the foot of the bed, playing Gran Turismo on his old PlaySation. A half full can of Red Bull sat beside him. It was 9 am.

She sat on the bed, a coffee mug with the Cleveland skyline emblazoned on the side and filled with red Gatorade was cupped in her hands. She leaned back against the brick wall that served as the headboard. She could feel the back of the shirt she was wearing catch itself on the tiny bits of rough texture that peppered the surface of the bricks.  
This t-shirt was one of his favorites. He had gotten it out of his closet two days ago and pulled it over her head. She had forgotten her pajamas. He had said “Here. It’s ok. Here you go.” He had smiled so brightly. Soft lights had shone within and out of his eyes. 

It was apparently some hard to find Black Sabbath t-shirt. It was all in black and the grim reaper resided on the front, skeletal, scythe lazily slung over one shoulder. Death was leaned over, looking like he was enjoying the tale some poor soul was telling him. Pleading with him to please come another day. Can I get just one more chance at life, just one more minute? Maybe that’s what whoever it was off frame was asking of Death. Just one minute more. 

She shook her head. It was just a t-shirt. She over analyzed every single thing and it was exhausting. 

She sat up and cleared her throat. “So I had a weird dream last night.”

“Oh, yeah?” He didn’t look up from the TV. Cars raced forward and wrecked. He cursed under his breath. 

“Well, yeah, so I was driving in the snow, and then I couldn’t see and it felt like the world was dropping out from under me and-” He turned his body slightly to her, his eyes still on his car on the screen. “You have that dream a lot. You and the snow.” He wasn’t wrong. 

“Well this time there was a man there. I think he was here.” 

He froze. On the TV his car crashed into another and started slowly scraping its front bumper along the concrete barriers. 

He didn’t look at her. “Wait. What do you mean? You mean you saw someone in your dream?”

“Yes. A man I had never seen before. I heard his voice in my dream and then he was there, in front of me.”

“Why did you say you thought he was here?”

“Well because I thought I was awake, but I couldn’t have been.”

He stood up. The controller fell from his lap. His car started forward again on the screen, immediately hitting another barrier. It jumped and stopped, jumped again. Always trying to move forward.

“Tell me what you remember.” He paced the floor at the foot of the bed in small circles.

She told him what she remembered.

Halfway through her story he must have stopped pacing because he had now positioned himself opposite her on the bed. She just realized he was sitting there. His legs were criss crossed underneath him and he had his hands over his face. The dark, soft peaks of his bed head surrounded his face like an aura. It seemed to outwardly soften the anger that was creeping to the surface of his skin. His eyes were wild and open and she could see the whites all around them.

“So he put his hands on you and threatened you. And I was just asleep there next to you?” 

He was furious. At her, at the man from her nightmare, at things he couldn’t control.

In that moment, his words and voice became fuzzy and one with the ringing in her ears. He was asking her things and wanting answers to questions she couldn’t process. And in that moment she noticed a small tear in the knee of his sweatpants. Right at that part where they were so worn and thin and smooth. _When did they finally tear? What made them finally give way?_

Out of some weird impulse, she reached out towards it. She touched it lightly and felt anchored by it, the rough edges of it, his skin hot underneath.  
He didn’t seem to register her movement or touch, other than a slight flutter of his hand against hers. The movement was both nothing and foreboding. 

“Barry, it was a dream. I mean, I think it was.” _I need to sew that tear up before it comes all the way apart._

He stood up with some kind of blind controlled rage. Her finger got caught in the tear, the rip widening like a mouth yawning. 

“It wasn’t a dream! Why didn’t you wake me up?” He was screaming. She covered her ears out of instinct. His outside voice. Why did it always feel like an ice pick into her eardrums? Her senses were coming undone. 

“I, I couldn’t. I couldn’t move, I didn’t know what was happening. I’m so sorry, I-” 

Nothing she said would have mattered in that moment. He was already throwing his sweats off and putting on his jeans and shoes. Why did she say anything? On some level she had known this wouldn’t end well. But nothing bad had happened. Right? Why was he acting this way?  
He had never been this way. She had never seen him act this way.

And then he was gone.


End file.
